neogaf

Last week it was the death of NeoGAF. This week, it’s all about the birth and rise of ResetEra. ResetEra is essentially the successor to NeoGAF – in name and in technology. The ethos behind the forum remains; don’t be a jerk. The strict moderation and registration processes continues but now the forum is powered by XenForo which coincidentally is the successor to vBulletin which powered NeoGAF.

I still find myself tempted to visit NeoGAF out of habit and morbid curiosity. It is all but dead with the mass exodus that took place. Some forum members traverse both ResetEra and NeoGAF but the community threads I followed are virtually lifeless on NeoGAF. While it is certainly possible that 24,000+ members are new comers or previously banned GAF members looking for a fresh start, a large contingent of the active community migrated over to ResetEra.

I’m flabbergasted with how quickly ResetEra ramped up. The technical team over there have done a marvelous job standing up the website and its influx of members. NeoGAF was notoriously spotty with availability during E3 times so it will be interesting to see how ResetEra will fare under that load. That is: if they manage to draw that kind of traffic.

I’m content with the new “home”. I see a lot of familiar faces in my usual hangouts and all throughout the site.

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Super Mario Odyssey is here but I also have a fair chunk of Breath of the Wild to play. What do?!

So NeoGAF is essentially dead. NeoGAF will never fully recover from the mass exodus of members and moderators after its founder was accused of sexual misconduct. This Waypoint article by Patrick Klepek details the events that transpired over the past weekend. I will miss the community but I won’t miss the site or its owner. Apparently some community members and former moderators are putting together replacement forums but what will emerge as the true successor to NeoGAF will not be known for some time.

I loved NeoGAF for introducing me to so many games, stories, music, movies, and wonderful people. The wonderful community even helped me get GameDealsCanada off the ground and introduced me to GiantBomb.

I love the community’s restrictive application process and lean interface. It wasn’t perfect by any means but it kept a lot of nonsense at the door. I loved the idea behind these strict and lean approach because they wanted to distill the forum to its essence: the discussion. It’s why so many developers and industry professionals dared to wade in and participate. The moderation team — for the most part — kept discussions on track.

So while we all wait for the dust to settle, I will continue to hit the shortcut on my web browsers like I’ve done so for so many years. Old habits die hard.

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I was fighting a stomach thing for the past few days and as a result I’ve made significant progress on Breath of the Wild. I can probably beeline it towards the end in preparation for Super Mario Odyssey but I haven’t felt that urge to do so yet.

I only have one game that I would to wrap up before the polls close and that’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I have it and it’s ready to be played but I’ve been distracted by Mechwarrior Online open beta. (I’ll write up my impressions of it later.)

Since I can only select 10 games, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out some notable absentees from my list. These are titles that I chose not to play this year because it’s either coming out on a preferred platform in the future, lack of time or I just didn’t think it was going to make it into the top 10.

Fez

Mark of the Ninja

FTL: Faster than Light

Dishonored

Far Cry 3

Assassin’s Creed III

Persona 4: Arena

I’m certain I’m missing others but that’s alright. If it is truly notable, I will give it kudos in “2013’s 2012 game of the year”.